


five pieces of a love story

by allthebees (jamtomorrowandjamyesterday)



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Everyone lives, M/M, except the Hales
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-19
Updated: 2014-02-19
Packaged: 2018-01-13 01:19:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1207483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jamtomorrowandjamyesterday/pseuds/allthebees
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An hour and a spark is all they need to start. Life's unfair, they know that, but they have to hold on to what's real while Derek learns the value of words even as Stiles learns to read silence. It was always there and they just had to find it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	five pieces of a love story

**Author's Note:**

> playlist
> 
> i. one crowded hour – augie march  
> ii. the remedy – jason mraz  
> iii. keep your head up – ben howard  
> iv. black chandelier – biffy clyro  
> v. ordinary day – vanessa carlton

**_i._** _but one crowded hour would lead to my wreck and ruin_. **_An hour in the cab of Stiles’ Jeep was enough to start it all._**  
  
Derek’s been hit with wolfsbane before. He’s laid on the floor of a barn and felt his blood burn with it while Laura howled at the moon. He’s pushed ashes that seared the skin of his fingers into wounds scattered across Laura’s legs. He knows what it feels like and what he has to do.  
  
What he doesn’t know is why he gets into the deathtrap of a Jeep with the teenager who makes it more than clear that he’d be happy to leave Derek to die on the side of the road.  What he doesn’t know is why he doesn’t believe Stiles really would leave him to die even though there’s no lie in his heartbeat.  
  
The cab of the Jeep is crowded and reeks of everything Derek hated as a teenager but he can’t lie to himself. The hour they spend in there is the start of something.  
  
  
  
 ** _ii._** _who says that you deserve this and what kind of god would serve this?_ **_Stiles always knew life was unfair but this just seems ridiculous._  
  
** Something bitter and uncomfortable twists in Stiles’ stomach when they put their backs to the wall and his brain has time to process the sight of Derek flying across the parking lot. It goes from uncomfortable to downright painful when Scott blames the murders on Derek, certain death making him a convenient scapegoat, and Stiles barely manages to bite back a protest.  
  
He isn’t a good person all the time, he _knows_ that, but there are lines. He can be a dick, especially to people he doesn’t particularly care for, but this feels unfair even though Derek falls into the don’t-particularly-care-for category the 75% of the time he isn’t in the hate-with-the-fire-of-a-thousand-burning-suns category.  
  
Derek’s survival is kind of a catch-22 in the end. “Bad news or badder news first?” Stiles asks him and hopes his heart doesn’t pound clear out of his chest. “Your life really kind of sucks, dude.” **  
  
  
  
 _iii._** _and oh honey, I never, I never dreamed of you. **Derek never would have even dared to dream of someone like Stiles.**_ **  
  
**Stiles is many things. Derek has a lot of words he could use to describe the teenager and not very many of them are particularly flattering. Stiles is infuriating and loud and obnoxious. He’s also an asshole approximately 98% of the time unless you happen to be Lydia Martin.  
  
Derek definitely isn’t Lydia Martin.  
  
Their rough edges catch and grate against each other and Derek hisses threats around his fangs that Stiles laughs at. Stiles isn’t a wolf and he doesn’t need Derek to be an alpha but Derek’s long forgotten how to be more than one thing at once. He thinks that maybe he lost that with Laura.  
  
Sometimes Stiles calls him the Beast and Derek pretends he doesn’t know who that is and then they shout at each other some more. Sometimes the only thing Derek knows is real is Stiles because he never would have imagined him.  
 **  
  
  
 _iv._** _I’ll sit in silence for the rest of my life if you’d like. **Stiles learns the value of silence even as Derek learns the value of words.**_ **  
  
**Derek’s silences say things that Stiles never would have imagined before he learned to read them for what they really are. He wonders whether they have a different smell to werewolves because they all _feel_ different to him.  
  
Some of his silences are so heavy he thinks that it’s a wonder even Derek can stay standing under them. He never really gave the idea of someone carrying the weight of the world on their shoulders much validity until he sat through one of those silences and felt every pound of that weight where his side was pressed against Derek’s.  
  
Others are easy. Some feel cool and others feel warm and he understands, for the first time, why words mean more when they aren’t always there. He isn’t afraid of silence, not anymore.  
  
He learns to appreciate silence from Derek and, after a while, Derek learns how to break it from Stiles. **  
  
  
  
 _v._** _and I know he’s no stranger for I feel I’ve held him for all of time. **This was always there between them.**_  
  
Stiles laughs himself all the way to a stomachache when Danny rolls his eyes at them and says “I knew he wasn’t your cousin,” and Derek rumbles, quietly distressed, some kind of denial under his breath. Erica winks, asks for details, and Boyd nods with a flash of a smile.  
  
Scott wrinkles his nose and doesn’t bother with verbal acknowledgement. Allison grins wide enough to dimple and says “Finally.” Isaac makes a whining sound and says “We already knew and we don’t have to talk about it anymore.” Jackson’s judgmental tutting sounds odd and tinny over the Skype connection and Lydia’s just sounds smug.  
  
The Sheriff takes Derek aside and Melissa takes Stiles aside. Derek nods solemnly and Stiles smiles and says “I know.”  
  
“It just took us a while to end up on the same page at the same time,” Stiles says and Derek’s easy silence says the same.


End file.
